By Ron Wilson, director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University

Bigfoot has been sighted. And, boy, is he big!

Today we’ll meet the owner of a rural Kansas welding shop that does metal repairs and millwright work, and also finds time for fun projects — such as constructing a giant model of Bigfoot. 

Derek Fagan is the owner and founder of Coyote Welding in Kinsley, Kansas. Born in McPherson, he served as a mechanic in the military and took welding classes at night.  After the service, he moved to Kinsley and took welding jobs in the area. For 21 years, he worked as a welder at Cimarron Welding.

In 2021, his boss at Cimarron Welding chose to retire. “I already had this building in Kinsley, so I decided to open my own shop here,” Fagan said. He bought equipment from his former boss.

“That equipment had the initials CW engraved on it for Cimarron Welding,” Fagan said.  “I decided to name my business Coyote Welding so I could use the same initials.”

The Coyote is the mascot of the local high school, so it was a perfect fit. Coyote Welding opened in March 2022. Today, Coyote Welding is a full-service repair, maintenance and metal fabrication business.

“I do a lot of repair work for the farmers around here,” Fagan said. The company also manufactures parts for major agribusiness companies in the region.

Fagan has twin sons and a younger daughter, Christa, who works in the medical field.  One son, Andrew, studied civil engineering at K-State and works for BG Construction in Manhattan. The other son, Daniel, studied engineering design at Fort Hays State and has joined Coyote Welding.

The boys grew up around this type of metal production.

“I spent a summer as in intern sitting behind a desk at a company in Kansas City, and I knew I wanted to do more hands-on work,” Daniel said. “I took every shop class I could in high school.”

He adds: “When I was in school at Fort Hays State, our teacher wanted us to do a class project, so we built a 3D model of a tiger head (the college mascot).” That gave Daniel the idea that he could build other structures.

“At Coyote Welding, Daniel runs the plasma table,” Fagan said. He designs and manufactures parts as needed. The plasma cutter also allows them to create intricate designs in metal. 

For fun, Daniel found a digital file online that he could use to program the plasma cutter to cut the pieces necessary to build a model of the mythical Bigfoot. “The file imports into the plasma software and tells the plasma cutter how to cut the pieces,” he said.

In the shop, they bend and weld the pieces together to create the final product.

“I was able to scale up the design from 9 feet to nearly 12 feet,” Fagan said. There were 97 pieces of metal, bent by hand, as needed. Five hundred bends were needed.

The result was an almost 12-foot-tall Bigfoot that stands outside the Coyote Welding shop along Highway 56 in Kinsley. It is highly visible right next to the highway.

To say this is eye-catching would be an understatement. Countless vehicles have made a U-turn to get a closer look.

“People stop all the time to take pictures,” Fagan said. The pictures have even been posted on Wichita television.

The Fagans have created other structures as well. They constructed a remarkably lifelike model of a dog. For Halloween, they built a giant metal jack-o-lantern. They designed Christmas-themed products, such as snowmen and candy canes.

“We build that stuff for fun when we have time,” Fagan said.

While these projects are for fun, they have generated visibility for Coyote Welding.  That’s good to see in a rural community such as Kinsley, population 1,456 people. Now, that’s rural.

For more information, search for Coyote Welding on Facebook.

Bigfoot has been sighted in Kansas. We commend Derek and Daniel Fagan of Coyote Welding, who are making a difference by building this business and creating a huge piece of visual art.

It is definitely a sight to see.